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Top 10 (and a bit) films of … 1973

I’m blogging about the top ten (more or less) movies of every year since I was born. This week it’s time to delve into 1973 where things are starting to pick up.

IMDB Top Ten (by popularity (link)

  1. The Exorcist
  2. Soylent Green
  3. The Wicker Man
  4. American Graffiti
  5. The Day Of The Jackal
  6. The Holy Mountain
  7. The Sting
  8. Westworld
  9. The Long Goodbye
  10. Serpico

US & Canada Box Office Top Ten (link)

  1. The Exorcist
  2. The Sting
  3. American Graffiti
  4. Papillon
  5. The Way We Were
  6. Magnum Force
  7. Live and Let Die
  8. Robin Hood
  9. Paper Moon
  10. Serpico

As per above I’m using two sources for my top ten lists. First is IMDB filtered by year and sorted by Popularity (doing this with User Rating, which would seem the sensible way to go produces … unexpected results). Finding reliable box office rankings is a bit tricky, so for 1971 thru 1976 I’ll be using the North America box office published on The Numbers. From 1977 I’ll be able to use worldwide box office, which will be a bit less geographically biassed. Either way, the goal here is not to provide definite statistics, but simply to provide a nominal list of top movies from the year, both contemporary and retrospectively, with which I can then embarrass myself by revealing how many classic works of modern cinema I’ve failed to see!

The Exorcist

I’d all but forgotten that The Exorcist was, just like A Clockwork Orange, essentially ‘banned’ in the UK for most of my childhood (and beyond). While it was never technically a ‘video nasty’ it was among a suite of movies that were denied video certificates (a requirement for home video distribution in the UK) and could therefore only legally be shown in cinemas. Combined with its reputation—courtesy of my parents’ generation—as one of the scariest movies ever made and it’s no surprise I was a bit underwhelmed when I finally saw it sometime around the turn of the century. It was fine but maybe, dare I say, a little dated and boring?

Nevertheless, the best things only improve with age and I did take it upon myself to give The Exorcist a fresh viewing just a few months back whereupon, I’m relieved to say, my view of it was completely transformed. While there remain, arguably, a few pacing issues, and the ethics of William Friedkin’s directing methods undoubtedly cast a dark shadow, I came away fully appreciating its status as a revered slice of cinema excellence. A large part of this re-evaluation is due to my love of seventies movies—something that has only grown over the last several decades—but it is also a damn good film, elevated by its intense third act and the incredible presence of Max Von Sydow (who I only realised very recently was aged up for this movie!)

In all honesty, it’s not a movie that’s likely going anywhere near my top ten but it’s definitely one where I’m already looking forward to future viewings.

Soylent Green

I think I’ve only ever seen this once, which is a lapse I should probably remedy. Inevitably, I knew the twist long before I saw the movie but that didn’t make it any less engrossing. The only scene I really remember is the one where they put Edward G Robinson to rest—and only because it reminded me strongly of a similar scene from The Parallax View (which we shall be discussing next year). Back on the watchlist it goes!

American Graffiti

Another film that I found perfectly enjoyable on first viewing but have never particularly felt compelled to revisit—although if I were to stumble across it again sometime I expect I would happily sit down and watch it through. It’s amusing to me that this is George Lucas delivering a nostalgic paean to a lost era of growing up in the USA but, for me at least, it works equally well as a memento of a bygone age of cinema and also an echo of the early years of my life that I spent exploring the history of film. Shame George Lucas never amounted to much, eh?

The Wicker Man

It was either in my late teens or my early twenties when I really, properly started to delve into horror cinema, particularly British horror. Some of this would have come from broadening my cinematic horizons. The rest from the fact that I was an Anne Rice devouring vampire fanatic, which inevitably led to a renewed enthusiasm for the Christopher Lee / Hammer Dracula movies, which itself opened all sorts of doorways into hidden pockets of british cinema and other essential horror avenues.

The Wicker Man didn’t get a UK video release until 1990 so my first exposure to it (and to so, so many other movie classics) would almost certainly have been via Alex Cox’s legendary and essential Moviedrome series. It was, in fact, the main feature of the very first episode, back in May 8 1988 (just a few days after my 17th birthday), and some internet demigod has even uploaded an old taped copy of Cox’s intro. I believe it was also one of the many films we looked at as part of my Film Studies degree about a decade later. 

As an avid movie collector my history with The Wicker Man is tightly linked to its history on home video, through the various restorations, rereleases and alternative versions that have come out over the years. I now have the 4k edition which, I think, includes three different versions of the movie so we must surely have come to the end of that particular road now.

It’s a film that I’ve admired and enjoyed over the years and have, eventually, come to adore—possibly because it reminds me just a tiny bit of the English yesteryear in which I grew up. Yes, this is, perhaps, my very own American Graffiti. And, no, we did not typically sacrifice virginal policemen to pagan gods back then. At least, not that I remember …

The Day of The Jackal

Another masterpiece. I recall watching this with my Dad at a very early age—most likely in the late seventies, when I guess it would have first aired on UK TV. Of course, one of the things I remember most vividly, it’s the climactic (anti-climactic?) ending … I’ll demur from adding spoilers, just in case. I also very much remember the twist and turns concerning the Jackal’s real identity. 

I’ve rediscovered the movie in more recent years and absolutely love the methodical approach it takes to tracking the Jackal’s process and the parallel efforts to track him down. A deliberately unshowy movie that grips from start to finish.

Magnum Force

The second best Dirty Harry movie by a very comfortable margin. It may not have Andy Robinson at his deranged best but it does have David Soul playing a dirty cop (ahead of his Starsky and Hutch days) and it also has Hal Holbrook, who is one of my favourite stars of seventies cinema that most people won’t have heard of. Nobody plays slightly shifty yet with gravitas in the way that Holbrook does.

Live and Let Die

Fun fact: I first watched this when it debuted on UK TV and due to a misunderstanding borne of my young age I spent several years believing it had been made specially for TV. I distinctly remember being both puzzled and fascinated by this—how and why would they make Bond moves for cinema and TV? Do they alternate? Bear in mind this was an era of TV specials (we could barely  keep Tom Jones off our screens!) so it wasn’t such an unusual concept for a ten-year-old.

Anyway—epic theme song, okayish movie. Right?

Westworld

When I was at school (secondary/high school) we had an English teacher who would set up a TV and a VCR in the assembly hall on the last day of each term and screen Westworld for us. I have no idea what the rationale for this was, and there was definitely at least one instance where me and my friends took advantage of the situation to skip the movie, sneak out of the hall and hang out on the playing fields instead.

Clearly these enforced, repeated screenings didn’t dull my opinion of the film one bit as I remember recording it off TV in later years and watching it repeatedly. There are so many moments that stick with me from this one: the twist of the surefire hero character getting killed off halfway through; the deliberate tonal shifts from camp to sinister, action to horror; the magnificent Yul Brynner; even the somewhat hokey effects. A fascinating, engrossing story about human hubris that knows enough about cinema to have some fun along the way.

Robin Hood

I saw this at the cinema while on holiday in the US, probably sometime in the early eighties. I remember that, but don’t remember much about the movie except it was perfectly enjoyable and there was at least one song I remembered from an LP I owned of Disney music when I was even younger. An echo of a simpler time when men were foxes in miniskirts and princesses were also foxes, but with far more clothing.

The Long Goodbye

I think my Dad first introduced me to this one and I remember revisiting it several times after that. I treated myself to a blu-ray copy (imported from the UK) several years back and have been waiting for the right occasion to watch it again—there’s a lesson here about passively waiting for things that never happen unless you make them.

You can’t help but love Elliott Gould in almost anything and here he is in his seventies prime, playing a 1930s character stuck in an age where even his cat seems to be several steps ahead. The Long Goodbye is more of an experience than a narrative and yet it also delivers plenty of twists, turns and drama along the way.


The Unseen

Two films that I really should have seen by now but haven’t, even though they’ve both been on my watchlist for quite a while now: The Sting, Serpico. Let’s not dwell on my failings as a cinephile. I’ll get around to these two.

Other films that I possibly should have seen but have little intention of doing so: Papillon (which honestly sounds really boring and unfun), The Way We Were (which sounds like it has a far more interesting behind the scenes story), and Paper Moon. Actually I think I’ve seen Paper Moon. I vaguely remember watching it back home when I had a TV in my bedroom. But it could just as easily have been a completely different movie.

In the films-I’ve-never-even-heard-of category we have: Holy Mountain. Actually, having just looked it up on Wikipedia, I am of course familiar with Jodorowsky but mostly in the context of his infamous attempt to bring Dune to the cinema. I suspect Holy Mountain is best watched after dropping a couple of tabs—would a nice, fresh cuppa work instead?

The Unmentioned

1973 was a pretty good year for cinema with a number of other films that are worth mentioning for one reason or another, but I’m going to limit myself to four. Firstly we have to acknowledge Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Not a film I’ve watched that many times, but an absolutely iconic piece of cinema.

This was also the year that Bruce Lee was supposed to have made it big in the west, with the release of Enter The Dragon. A few months back my eldest son mentioned that he was keen to watch this and I realised I’d never actually seen it myself. A quick trip to JB Hifi to pick up the remarkable cheap 4k release and we were all set. It was glorious fun and it’s a great tragedy that Lee died before the film was even completed.

Moving into an entirely different genre and a personal favourite of mine: High Plains Drifter. I was introduced to this one in my twenties by a flatmate who did a great job of selling the supernatural aspect (of which I was completely unaware: I thought it was just another western). Indeed, it works excellently as a western, but overlaid with a vengeful and haunting tone that takes it to an entirely different place at times.

Finally, we can’t ignore Don’t Look Now (initially released as a double bill with The Wicker Man). Another film that I was introduced to through Moviedrome and later studied at university. A challenging film in some ways, I rewatched this not too long ago—possibly the first time I’d seen it on bluray, thanks to the Studio Canal restoration—and, boy, is it a gorgeous film. So much red.

Top 10 (ish) films of … 1972

I’m blogging about the top ten (more or less) movies of every year since I was born. This week we delve into 1972.

IMDB Top Ten

  1. The Godfather
  2. Jeremiah Johnson
  3. Deliverance
  4. Last Tango In Paris
  5. The Poseidon Adventure
  6. Travels With My Aunt
  7. Pink Flamingos
  8. The Last House On The Left
  9. Cabaret
  10. The Getaway

US Box Office Top Ten

  1. The Godfather
  2. The Poseidon Adventure
  3. What’s Up, Doc?
  4. Deliverance
  5. Deep Throat
  6. Jeremiah Johnson
  7. Cabaret
  8. The Getaway
  9. Last Tango In Paris
  10. Lady Sings The Blues

With a couple of notable exceptions it looks like 1972 was not so much of a banner year for cinema. That being said, we’re certainly in an interesting transitional stage—budding blockbuster giants like The Godfather, The Poseidon Adventure and more traditional titles such as What’s Up Doc and Jeremiah Johnson share the stage with subversive fare like Pink Flamingos, Deep Throat while Last Tango In Paris further blurs those boundaries. We’re definitely moving … somewhere.

Unsurprisingly, this is a year of movies that I remember my parents talking about, and directly introducing me to in a few cases. Despite that, it’s remarkable how few of the titles listed above I’ve actually seen. So let’s get into it.

The Godfather

I developed a passion for films quite early on in life, and it was in my early teens that I first discovered The Godfather, mostly on the strength of another film fan friend of mine raving about it. My strongest early memories of it include, somewhat bizarrely, Marlon Brando cavorting around with orange peel in his mouth but also, inevitably, key moments like Michael Corleone preparing himself to gun down Sollozzo and McCluskey, and Sonny at the tollbooth. Like many vintage classics, I grew up watching this one in pan-and-scan on VHS tape (likely copied second-generation from a rented copy—yeah, we did just fine without bittorrent back in those days!) so it’s been particularly satisfying to revisit The Godfather across its various releases. 

Most recently I had the pleasure of watching the recent 4k remaster with my eldest son (our second shared viewing, actually). It’s one of those movies that delivers more and more with each viewing—even now, decades after first watching it, I’m still relishing picking up the tiny details and subtleties, as well as admiring the masterful way the story is constructed. A worthy classic.

The Poseidon Adventure

This is a film that’s never going to end up on any of my “best movies ever” lists, but it still holds a very special place in my heart. I recall watching this with my mother around Christmas time (and Wikipedia confirms that it arrived on UK TV screens on December 23, 1979) so it already had that big event feel to it. Christmas plus blockbuster disaster movie? Perfect for an eight-year-old. 

We must have taped it as well, because I remember watching it more than once and while the spectacle of it all was unmistakably part of the fun, the bits I remember staying with me are some of the key story beats. The drama and dilemma of whether to stay in the ballroom where it’s supposedly safe, or make the potentially hazardous journey towards escape. The hero sacrificing himself right at the end so that everyone else he’s doggedly led to safety can live. The sheer toughness and bloody-mindnedness of Gene Hackman’s lead character (this was probably the start of my lifelong admiration for the actor). It may be a corny movie, it might even be a bad one, but the drama of it made a lasting impression.

I’ve watched it several times in the years since and have always enjoyed it. A particular delight for me is seeing Leslie Nielsen, about a decade before ascending to comedy godhood, playing the captain of the doomed ship.

Deliverance

Every time I think of Deliverance my mind is inevitably drawn to the thematically similar 1981 movie Southern Comfort—but we’re not here (yet) to talk about that one. My mother was the first person to tell me about Deliverance, and is quite likely the person who first encouraged me to watch it (this would not have happened in 1972 as I would have been less than two-years old at the time and definitely not capable of appreciating the subtle metaphor of anal rape being inflicted upon cappuccino-sipping city dwellers).

I’ll be honest and say this is not a particular favourite of mine, although I have nothing against it. That said, it’s been many years since I last watched it and I do plan to give it a rewatch at some point—mainly on the strength the What Went Wrong podcast (probably my favourite movie podcast) which recently did a deep dive into the making of Deliverance and gave me a renewed interest, and perspective, on it. Recommended listening, for sure.

The Getaway

This one is a slight oddity. I’ve only seen it for two reasons: I happened to catch the largely forgettable 1994 remake (starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger), and I later read the Jim Thompson novel (I was bingeing some of his work while on holiday around the time). I enjoyed the novel and it made me want to check out the [original] movie. Unfortunately, my overriding memory of the experience is a scene wherein a character gets shot at close range in the chest and it’s distractingly obvious that the prop gun has simply been ‘armed’ with a big daub of red paint on the end of the barrel to create the gunshot wound. I think some other things probably happened as well …


The Unseen

Let’s get the first elephant out of the room: Cabaret. I’ve definitely seen parts of this, most likely while my mother was watching it one time on TV, but I’ve never properly watched it. I have no idea why because it sounds bizarre and fascinating. So, this is one that’s definitely going on the watch list. The rest of the unseen, not so much.

I’m a big horror fan, and an admirer of Wes Craven, yet I’ve never seen Last House On The Left so what’s up with that? Well, I have seen The Virgin Spring, the Ingmar Berman classic upon which this movie is (somewhat improbably) based. I’m also not a big fan of rape/revenge movies so, in a sense, I’ve probably seen as much of this one as I need to.

I’m slightly surprised to find I’ve also never seen Deep Throat, given it had a certain notoriety when I was growing up. I’m even more surprised to learn that Pink Flamingos came out as early as 1972 as I had the idea that John Waters was an eighties film-maker (his work doesn’t have a huge amount of appeal for me, so my ignorance is perhaps forgivable). 

I do recall my mother talking about What’s Up, Doc? with great fondness, and I have the feeling I watched it at some early age but I remember very little about it. I’m not certain it’s the type of film that would stand up to being viewed now, and I don’t recall ever seeing any ‘best comedies of all time’ lists. 

Rounding things up, Jeremiah Johnson and Lady Sings the Blues are, I’m sure, worthy titles but I’m currently in no rush to find out. The film I’m least familiar with here is Travels With My Aunt, which stars the late Maggie Smith so at least has that going for it.

The Tragically Unmentioned

As already mentioned, 1972 wasn’t particularly noteworthy at the box office so there’s not much else vying for attention in this final section. I’ll give a quick shout out to Frenzy purely because it was the number one film of the year at the UK box office (likely due to the legendary British director finally making another film set in England), but it’s a long, long way from Hitchcock’s best work. I do, however, have a lot of love for Sleuth, the twisty thriller starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. I’m already looking forward to my next viewing. No spoilers! 

It was, once again, a reasonably prolific year for horror, even if the Hammer era was on the wane. Among various titles released by the studio this year, we have the ridiculous but also better-than-you-think Dracula AD 1972. I’m not sure if any of the other horror titles released in 1972 were any better, but like many people I have a particular weakness for the Christopher Lee Dracula movies and will celebrate them at any opportunity.

And we’re done. Join me next time for a stroll through 1973, and don’t forget to add your own highlights from this year in the comments!

Top 10 (sorta) films of … 1971

I’m blogging about the top ten (more or less) movies of every year since I was born. It’s gonna take a while …

IMDB Top Ten (link)

  1. A Clockwork Orange
  2. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
  3. The French Connection
  4. The Last Picture Show
  5. Dirty Harry
  6. Get Carter
  7. THX 1138
  8. Straw Dogs
  9. Klute
  10. Summer of ‘42

US Box Office Top Ten (link)

  1. Billy Jack
  2. Fiddler on the Roof
  3. Diamonds Are Forever
  4. The French Connection
  5. Summer of ‘42
  6. Dirty Harry
  7. A Clockwork Orange
  8. The Last Picture Show
  9. Bedknobs and Broomsticks
  10. Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song

Inspired by my friend Clay’s roundup of the top 25 movies of 1999 I’ve decided to blog about the top ten (sorta) movies from every year since I was born. I won’t be fully reviewing each movie because that would be ridiculous, instead I’ll briefly share my personal connection with the movie … including whether or not I’ve even seen it! Since biggest doesn’t necessarily mean best, I’ll be working from both the box office stats for the year and the IMDB rankings. In researching this project I’ve discovered that detailed box office records aren’t available prior to 1977.

My preference going forward will be to use the worldwide box office top 10 as reference, but for 1971 through to 1976 I only have access to the US data. If anyone can point me to a better source than the above listings then please let me know in the comments.

So, 1917 was the year I was born – no, wait—1971. Obviously I didn’t go to the cinema at all that year … at least as far as I know … but I’ve definitely seen several of its movies. Read on to find out what I’ve seen, what I’ve not seen, and what I think is also worthy of note. Let’s begin!

A Clockwork Orange

I have only seen this film once, and mostly out of curiosity. There is a myth that it was banned in the UK—caught up in the video nasties era—and, indeed, it wasn’t particularly easy to see it in the UK for many years while I was growing up (no bittorrent or Netflix back then!). However, the truth is that Stanley Kubrick himself withdrew it out of concerns that it would spark a wave of copycat violence. Naturally the film developed a significant sense of notoriety over the years until it was finally released in 1999 and proved to be … well, kinda boring in my opinion. I’ll revisit it one day but I’ve not felt particularly compelled to do so over the last 20 years or so.

Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

This is one of those films you grow out of and then grow back into again. For me, the main appeal comes from my enjoyment of Gene Wilder’s work and he makes, perhaps, the perfect Willy Wonka, adding just the right balance of charm and menace (oh, I wish we’d had the chance to see him playing an out and out villain). Meanwhile, the saccharine sweetness of the production is nicely offset by the low-level sadism of Roald Dahl’s storytelling. It’s not necessarily a film I go out of my way to watch, but it is one I’m always happy to revisit.

Summer of ‘42

A classic coming of age film that I recall watching at some point in the early eighties when I, too, was coming of age. I remember very little of it, but given it appears in both top 10 lists above perhaps I should give it a second look one day. I’ve only included it in this section because, for some inexplicable reason, the final shot of the movie has always stayed with me. I suspect, if I ever watch it again, I’ll discover that final scene is nothing at all like the one in my memory.

The French Connection

One of the most fascinating things (imo) about cinematic decades is that the first few years typically mark a stage of transition. In the case of the 1970s we see the staples of yesteryear (musicals, melodramas, westerns, historical epics) finally giving way to the more introspective era of New Hollywood, fuelled by auteurs like Kubrick, George Lucas and William Friedkin. In truth the era began in the late sixties, but it would be during the seventies that these directors would come to redefine modern cinema (and we’ll be seeing lots of their efforts in future posts).

For me The French Connection—gritty, downbeat and with a commitment to realism that few films (if any) had dared tackle before—is one of the first real seventies movies. It’s indelibly of its time but also an ageless masterpiece. One of those films I immediately look forward to revisiting again after every viewing.

Diamonds Are Forever

For a long time this was one of my favourite Bond movies, likely because it brought the same epic, yet tongue in cheek sense of the Roger Moore movies (which I grew up on) and yet felt like something of a discovery given it came from a previous era. It still has its charms but is so hugely problematic in so many ways that I suspect I may never be able to watch it again.

Recently I discovered that the very memorable Mr Wint, one of the two idiosyncratic henchmen that pop up throughout the movie, is played by Crispin Glover’s father. Which makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

Dirty Harry

Not quite as groundbreaking, perhaps, as The French Connection, but still a long-time personal favourite of mine. It’s a fascinating film to watch these days given that it’s essentially advocating for fascism and presenting an early version of Republican anti-government talking points (note how government bureaucracy and complacent senior police are presented as constant obstacles in Harry’s quest to save the public from a deranged serial killer). I imagine it’s popular viewing for supporters of the January 6th insurgency.

Regardless, it’s also a classic work of cinema with Clint Eastwood (note: Trump supporter) creating his most (second most?) iconic character, and Andrew Robinson (long before his Deep Space Nine days) portraying one of the most genuinely terrifying and disturbing villains in cinema history.

Get Carter

I had the pleasure of rewatching this in glorious 4k not too long ago. It’s a film I’ve long respected, having probably watched for the first time back in the eighties. However my last viewing delivered a far more profound appreciation for why this movie has so many admirers. It’s got a great story with an almost unique aesthetic, but it’s Michael Caine who really makes this an experience to treasure. I love a good anti-hero, and Jack Carter is a complete bastard of one (he even makes Harry Callahan look like a pussycat), and yet you stick by him for the whole bloody slog.

THX 1138

George Lucas doing sci-fi before Star Wars, and it couldn’t be more different. I’ve only seen this once, but it fits very nicely into that specifically seventies era of science-fiction which eschewed the shiny space-ships and slimy monsters and, well, looked ahead to how we could screw things up all by ourselves without the help of martians or things like other planets colliding with ours.


The Unseen

I’ve not seen every film in the two lists above, and in a few cases I’ve seen them but remember so little of the experience that I can’t in good conscience include them above.

In this latter category are The Last Picture Show, Straw Dogs and Klute. I should probably (re)watch The Last Picture Show properly one day, but I’ve never felt particularly compelled to do so. I’m even less interested in Straw Dogs, which I suspect is probably just going to be unpleasant and exploitative, and I’m generally not that interested in the revenge-porn genre anyway.

A strong exception is Klute. I’m a big fan of Alan Pakula’s movies, and this one has been on my rewatch list for quite some time … I might even get onto that soon and update this post when I do!

I enjoy a good musical but Fiddler on the Roof is one I’ve never been that interested in. I remember my mother watching it on TV when I was very young, and making me watch Topol (who was great in Flash Gordon!) singing “If I Was A Rich Man”. That’s enough for me. 

As for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I read the synopsis before writing this and it honestly sounds quite interesting. But I’m probably still not going to watch it.

The real surprise for me is two films that I’ve literally never heard of. I don’t claim to have heard of every film ever made, but I’m impressed that a film can be the number one movie in the US in the year of my birth and still completely escape my awareness. Billy Jack sounds like an interesting piece of cinema history, albeit with a similar message to Dirty Harry, but rather than have me talk about it just give the wikipedia page a quick read. 

In a similar vein, Melvin Van Peeble’s delightfully titled Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (how can I never have heard of a film with that title???) was another independent movie that struggled to find distribution but ended up doing well enough to land in the US top ten for the year. I gather it kickstarted the blaxploitation genre, so it definitely earns its place in cinema history … and is probably worth a watch for that reason alone.

Minor Omissions

Without being too exhaustive here, this year also saw the cult favourite Harold and Maude (which I’ve never seen) released alongside Nicolas Roeg’s classic Walkabout (which I have). 

Two of my [other] favourite films from this year include the science fiction drama The Andromeda Strain which somehow manages to be slightly old school and feel like it’s doing something different with the genre. It was also a very good year for horror, albeit seeing the slide of Hammer studios into its later, more exploitative fare. At the same time there were other studios and film-makers keen to make their stamp in the horror genre, and one of my favourite movies from this era is the somewhat bizarre, but very British folk horror title Blood on Satan’s Claw (which has just seen a 4k release!)

So, what are your favourite films from 1971?

The Year in Writing 2024

It’s New Year’s Eve 2023 (around 8am) which means it’s the ideal time for me to do my traditional recap of my writing efforts over the year.

The routine

I’ve already recapped the first half of the year right here, so I won’t retread that old ground suffice to say that things have mostly slipped into routine again but I do still need to nail down a proper writing schedule / habit / whatever. For the latter half of 2023 I more or less accepted that I was going to be able to write in the mornings on alternating weeks (for reasons that are far too domestic to bore you with here). While I did find a couple of suitable spots in my workplace I never truly settled on a single, ideal location—it didn’t help that sometimes other people had the audacity to already be sitting in the publically available location that I had preselected for my morning’s writing. People, eh?

So, while I got writing done during the year there was a continual distraction revolving around finding the right place to sit and write, or having to find an alternative place depending on the whims of the rest of the human race.

One thing I did find happening was the occasional urge to write in the evenings: something of a problem given I’d gotten rid of my writing desk. I considered a few possibilities, including writing at my main PC in the front room (oddly, I’ve never felt that comfortable writing on the PC; likely because there’s too much scope for distraction—something that doesn’t happen so much with the ipad). In the end the best solution appeared to be a slight rearrangement of the bedroom (really, the only place sufficiently free of interruption for me to write in) and the purchase of a suitably small desk that wouldn’t prove an obstruction. 

After a fair bit of research (and the disappointing lack of availability of what would have been the perfect desk) I settled for a small 60x40cm desk (my purchase decision helped by a healthy discount) and that’s what I’m writing at right now. 

If you noted the time at the top of this post you might have already concluded that I’m using this desk for morning writing as well. I’ve tried it out for the last couple of days and, yes, it looks like doing my morning writing before I leave for work may, again, be the best option. We do have some incoming changes to the household morning routine next year (primarily two kids starting high school) so flexibility is going to remain the order of the day for at least a few months yet.

The writing

As per 2022 I opted not to record my word counts in the traditional spreadsheet. I’m still reasonably happy with this approach, though not fully committed, and plan to continue not doing this for 2024. The disadvantage is that I lose the quick at-a-glance reference for all of my writing over the year, but the plus side is that I won’t punish myself when I see how (potentially) low my word counts were.

Starting with a brief summary:

  • Stories finished: 6
  • Stories started: 4

One of the major issues with Scrivener (my preferred writing tool) is that it doesn’t provide a revision history, so I get no visibility of the various dates and times that I might have worked on a story. That being noted, I’m fairly certain that all of these stories were started this year, so I’m pretty happy with that output.

Finished stories

Four of those finished stories would count as fan-fiction, inspired separately by Alien, The Thing, The Terminator and an episode of Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix. During the earlier part of the year I found myself needing to write, but lacking the focus to properly develop new stories and characters so dabbling in pre-established universes helped take some of that load off. You can read three of these stories by following the links below:

The Terminator story is part of a planned collection (as outlined in my earlier blog post). There will be five stories—at least that’s the current plan—and I hope to wrap this project up (and release all the stories together) early in 2024. 

Of the two other stories one was an unplanned tale inspired by a Magritte painting. It’s predictable, but entertaining and you can read it by following the link below.

The Lover

The final story was, I believe, inspired by a book I read at the end of last year about the cosmos (The Universe in Your Hand by Christophe Galfard- very good, go and read it if that’s your sort of thing). I’m holding this one back as it’s probably the only story I’ve written this year that is actually submittable for publication anywhere. We’ll see …

Unfinished stories

Of the four unfinished stories, only one of them has been worked on with any degree of earnestness. This is the story I mentioned in my mid-year post about an explorer who discovers a deeply buried secret about the origin of his society. It’s ended up being two stories mashed together and has required a greater degree of world-building than I’m typically used to. And, because I need to make things as hard as possible I’ve opted to tell it using a non-linear narrative with the last half of the story being told backwards. You can probably blame all of the Christopher Nolan films I’ve watched this year for that.

I have written a reasonable chunk of this one and it’s my next writing priority, so keep your fingers crossed that I can pull this one off.

The other three stories were all random ideas that popped up during the year and I’ll share the prompts that got me started on these for your entertainment:

  • what if being ‘wishlisted’ meant something sinister? what if you were being wishlisted? and for what?
  • what if there was a literal price for death? a cost associated with every death that you cause, whether deliberate or accidental? (this one very much inspired by the movie In Time, which is pretty good!)
  • two people hunting each other across a remote planet, neither remembering why (this is the same story I referenced in my previous blog post)

Other projects and novels

I have three other projects that remain very close to my heart, and which I would also like to make progress on in 2024 (somehow this post has shifted from 2023 reflection into a 2024 resolution!)

My collection of short stories linked together by the end of the universe is still very much on the front burner. I mostly need to organise what I’ve done already and work out where the gaps are so I can plan to get those bits written.

The completed novel. Yes, I did complete a novel a year or two ago. While I’m 95% happy with it, I still want to do a final edit before I attempt to send it out. I enjoy editing, but I’m mindful that time spent editing is time not spent writing so I need to be wary of falling into an editing hole for weeks on end.

The sci-fi novel. I wrote about half of a sci-fi novel a few years back. The idea of it keeps on popping back onto my head demanding to be finished. I stalled on this one due to a few small issues with plot logistics, but those are mostly solved now so it’s just a case of refreshing my plans for it and knuckling down. Maybe something for the latter half of next year?

And that’s it! Tune in during 2024 for inevitable updates and wish me luck. In return, I wish you all the best for your writing endeavours or wherever your hobbies or passions take you in 2024.

A menagerie of Things

At some point in the recent past I was struck with an urge to read Who Goes There?, the John W. Campbell novella that inspired one of my favourite movies, The Thing. I can’t recall where that urge came from—maybe it was nothing more than a desire to read something new and yet also familiar—but it was suddenly very important that I read it. Unfortunately it turned out that I did not, in fact, own a copy of Who Goes There? nor could I find a sufficiently cheap copy online that would arrive quick enough to scratch the itch.

What I did have, I soon remembered, was an ebook of Frozen Hell, the original version of Campbell’s novella which I had picked up through Kickstarter several years earlier. This version had been discovered among Campbell’s papers some years after his death. By all accounts it is largely the same as the eventual published version, the inclusion of three introductory chapters being the major difference from the novella.

Reading this triggered something of a descent into a rabbit hole during which I read almost everything Thing-related that I could get my hands on and—because this is how things work—my thoughts on all of them are below!

Frozen Hell

Frozen Hell book cover

You can read more about the backstory to this version of Campbell’s novel here. My completism doesn’t quite extend to needing to read the published version as well, so I consider it to be an acceptable substitute for Who Goes There? By all accounts it’s essentially the same piece of work: just a little longer and lacking a handful of edits. 

It was an interesting experience reading something hailing from the ‘Golden Age’ of American science fiction and I came away with two main thoughts:

  1. People really don’t write like this anymore (duh), and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
  2. Given the huge stylistic differences, there is a surprising amount of commonality with John Carpenter’s movie here.

On the first point this is really about the way that narrative styles have evolved over the last hundred years or so, veering away from a sense of artifice and drama towards something more naturalistic. Campbell’s characters are, nevertheless, very human—they react in predictable ways to the fact that there’s a creature among them that might not only kill them but destroy the entire world—but there were still moments that I found odd. Characters would often laugh or giggle, which seemed jarring given the situation they’re in. At other times they would come across as almost too blase. 

Furthermore, while Campbell’s descriptive writing is superb, there was an awful lot of talking—and I’m talking primarily about expository dialogue here. Despite the brevity of the tale, and the leanness of the plot, the narrative is very dense and I had the sense of having to wade through it to get to the end even though this is really a very short and enjoyable read.

Given the above, it was a pleasant surprise to discover quite how much Bill Lancaster had taken from the original novella when writing his screenplay for Carpenter’s adaptation. I’m not going to go into spoiler territory here, but a lot of the tentpoles are already in place—the blood test; the doctor going insane; the shape-changing. While Lancaster undeniably used Campbell’s blueprint and turned it into something fresh and new, it’s immediately clear that he took far more than just the basic concept from the novella.

The Adaptations

I’m not going to talk much about the 1982 version of The Thing; partly because there’s already so much written about it out there, but also because it’s such a part of my cinephile DNA that I’m not sure I can say anything objective about it at this point.

The Thing From Another World 1950 movie poster

What I can talk about instead is the Howard Hawks 1951 movie The Thing From Another World (which I will note was directed by Christian Nyby, but almost everyone considers it to be a Hawks movie). I had seen this movie before (as in several decades ago) but I purposefully rewatched it before writing this blog post because I am at least that much of a completist.

It’s a pretty good movie, albeit not one I would personally regard as essential viewing. It’s a surprisingly loose adaptation. Again, there are moments from the book—the discovery and subsequent blowing up of the spaceship; the creature’s first encounter involving dogs—but it mostly goes off in its own direction. One major change is the monster which, due to special effects limitations of the day, is just a man in a suit rather than the shape-changing terror of the novella. This is a shame in my view: I think the very same limitations would have produced a truly tense drama had they opted to retain the ‘trust no one’ foundation of the novella. One thing they did do, however, was work in a pretty clever way to ensure that the alien (despite being reduced to a simple monster) still posed a global threat.

Characterisation was once again interesting. A lot of work had clearly been put into the interpersonal relationships between some of the (large cast of) characters, but this again resulted in some unusual moments of levity. There’s a clear excess of joviality in some scenes given the likelihood of death and global extinction lurking around the corner. I’m not sure if this was a holdover from the novel, or simply the film-makers’ choice. 

One final thing that stood out is the frequency of scenes where characters would talk over each other—a naturalistic choice that was likely heralded by Orson Welles with 1941’s Citizen Kane, but which wouldn’t become a common dramatic choice for many more years to come. (Note: I have since been advised that it was His Girl Friday, released a year before Citizen Kane, that introduced overlapping dialogue. Given that was also a Howard Hawks’ film, it makes perfect sense that the technique would also be used here.)

Short Things

Short Things book cover

One interesting companion piece included within the Frozen Hell Kickstarter was Short Things, a short story collection inspired by the original novel (not, I repeat, not by the Carpenter movie or its 1951 predecessor). Most of the stories were pretty good fun, especially the opener by Alan Dean Foster which efficiently undoes the ‘happy’ ending of the novel. There are various direct follow ons and some more tangentially related tales. Most baffling was a story by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro which offered some fascinating ideas but seemed to have no relation to The Thing, and then simply stopped. Whatever that one was supposed to be, I’d love to read the rest of it! 

I wouldn’t say this collection is an essential read but it’s definitely a fun one so long as you’re familiar with the John W. Campbell inspiration.

The Return Of The Thing (TV Miniseries)

The Thing 1982 poster

What TV miniseries I hear you ask? Well, in 2005 there was lots of buzz around a proposed TV sequel (to John Carpenter’s movie) to be aired on the Sci-Fi channel. This eventually evaporated into nothing but through my Thing rabbit-hole I found a copy of the script!

… which was not great.

Had it been made it would have possibly been entertaining, but it would more likely have been terrible. The script reads as though the one takeaway the writer got from the 1982 movie was the idea that the creature can change into other lifeforms. The logic surrounding when and why the creature would do this is barely thought through and mostly seems to be there as an excuse to have a special-effects set-piece or action scene at regular intervals. There’s the kernel of a good story revolving around a remote US town succumbing to alien possession but with this setup there’s always the risk of simply repeating the Carpenter movie, or ending up retelling Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. In any case, any opportunity to recreate the paranoid dread of Carpenter’s movie is undermined at almost every opportunity by relatively illogical twists for the sake of having a twist.

A fun read, but I’m generally relieved this didn’t get made.

The Thing (2011)

The Thing 2011 movie poster

I’m likely in a minority of people who think that the 2011 prequel was not bad, although I’m far from alone in finding it almost completely ruined by the needless inclusion of CGI effects (which were used to replace the practical effects painstakingly created for the film in honour of its 1982 inspiration).

I chose not to rewatch the film on this occasion, but I did find a copy of Ronald D Moore’s original script. Now, my main complaint with the movie is that the occasions when the Thing reveals itself don’t always make sense. There’s a certain logic to Carpenter’s movie (and Lancaster’s script) wherein the creature will only expose itself if it either has an opportunity to imitate someone new (i.e. they’re alone) or if it’s threatened and the game is up. This logic is sometimes followed in the 2011 movie, but there are also several moments where it seems the creature is shown purely because the script demanded a set-piece.

To the best of my memory, the first half of the script is somewhat different than the movie, but once the Thing shows up it’s effectively the same plot, which is disappointing since this is where most of the issues are. Unlike Return Of The Thing, there is a good sense of paranoia and distrust which drives the latter sections of the narrative, but it is somewhat hobbled by needing to work as an authentic prequel to Carpenter’s movie.

I did not reread the Dark Horse comics for this. I recall being quite excited about them when they were first announced in the early 1990s but lost interest in them quite quickly due to the same lack of narrative consistency that plagued most of the attempted sequels described above. I understand there’s also a sequel novel to Who Goes There? in the works but I don’t plan to rush out and read that. I suspect The Thing is best left to rest (having already produced a genre-defining novel, a science-fiction classic, and an iconic sci-fi horror movie) but given the obvious franchise appeal I’m sure we’ll see more stories or movies sooner or later.

One more Thing

Actually, two more things. 

First, I wanted to give a quick plug to the awesome short story The Things by Peter Watts, which tells the story of The Thing (the 1982 version) from the perspective of the creature. A great read, which was nominated for a Hugo among various other accolades.

Also, in the process of reading all of the above my mind inevitably started pondering various other narrative threads and I found myself thinking “how does a creature like the Thing come into being?” Well, if you want to read what I came up with then check out my short story Imitations Of Life, which you can read for the high price of nothing over on my Slightly Odd Tales site.

Writing update: June 2023

In which I discuss my lack of writing updates …

So, without turning this into too much of a journal type post: it’s not been the most productive start to the year, But it’s fine. I remarried at the end of 2022 and the priority since then has been settling our new merged (double yolk) family (me, my wife, and four – count’em! – four kids). Plus we added a puppy to the mix and Puppywatch took up many of the scraps of spare time that were left for a while (albeit in the cutest way). The good news is the puppy needs less and less direct supervision by the day and the merged family is settling well, so I’ve recently been able to get back into something of a writing routine.

I mentioned a puppy, therefore there must be an obligatory puppy photo …

Inevitably with a big life change like this there are ripple effects and my writing routine was one of the things temporarily caught in the wake. For the last several years I’ve written at a small desk in my bedroom for about 40 minutes each day before leaving for work. However, with twice as many people sharing the house now, the environment is just a little too disruptive for me to be able to focus properly. The [obvious] solution ended up being to leave the house early and find somewhere else to write before starting work for the day. Fortunately I work in a university, which has numerous spots that are conducive to activities such as writing and study and, after trying out various locations, I found the one that worked best for me was [less obviously] a table near the canteen area of our library’s main study level. For various reasons, I’m now writing on alternate weeks but the main thing is that I have a routine again, which means I can get back into some of my writing projects.

I have two main projects that I’m hoping to focus on for now (well, three if you count finding an agent to help me get my novel published). I also have several short stories that I’m in the middle of working on—none of which have anything to do with the above-mentioned projects: I’m nothing if not all over the place.

The main project is one I alluded to in my last post: a collection of stories based around a common plot point: that plot point being the end of the universe. I’ve always wanted to write a collection of short stories that fit together into a larger whole—where each story stands on its own, but you also get something of an overarching beginning, middle, and end—and it seems that this particular idea of people on different worlds facing the impending end of existence in their different ways is The One. I have a few of the stories in the bag already, as well as a decent grasp on major ‘plot’. For the rest I have a shortlist of story prompts (13, including stories already completed) to work from. Maybe this one can reach fruition sometime next year.

Naturally I have been distracted from this project by various other ideas along the way. The second potential project is a short set of stories that might be considered “What If …?” tales inspired by the first Terminator movie. I watched Terminator: Dark Fate in the recentish past (a perfectly good Terminator movie that was perhaps a little too bogged down in the franchise’s iconography) and it prompted me to wonder: how do you tell a fresh story when the original is so effectively self-contained. And how do you avoid—unlike almost every spin-off and sequel— having it revolve around yet another terminator going back to a different point in time.

In the end I came up with three or four ideas that proved interesting enough that they wanted to be turned into stories. I’ve started one of them, but I’m currently debating whether I have this collection openly based on Terminator (and its characters); or whether I change the names and make the source of inspiration a little more vague. I’m leaning towards the latter but since these stories will be pretty transparently based on Terminator (and the reading will likely be more satisfying if you know that) I’ll likely just end up publishing them on my blog (as fanfic) rather than trying to do anything else with them.

And this leaves the two other stories that I’m working on, which I can talk even less about. One is a simple tale of an astronaut stranded on an alien planet with something hunting them—this is my ‘easy’ story that I return to when my mental capacity isn’t really up to solving major plot riddles. The other is a more complex tale about someone uncovering a dark secret from their civiliation’s past. This has been quite a challenge to develop but it’s been a lot of fun discovering the twists and turns of the plot. While I haven’t written a word on this one since last year, I did come up with an interesting twist to take me through the next section of the story which I’m really looking forward to writing.

(Author’s note: I had completely forgotten about these two stories until I came back to edit this blog post, which I started back in February – talk about getting distracted!!)

And then there’s also that unfinished science-fiction novel …

Anyway, there we go: a few projects on the boil, a lot of distractions, and limited capacity to get stuck into them, but I take the view that having some limits on my available time for writing means that I will be a bit more disciplined about taking up the opportunities that do fall across my path, and making the best use of them. Check back in a month or so to see how well that’s going …

Writing Update 2022

2022 was a comparatively big writing year for me: I had two stories published, finished a novel, and started another major writing project. It was also the first year (since I started writing regularly) that I didn’t routinely record my writing stats in a spreadsheet. This is because I, apparently, forgot to set up my spreadsheet for 2022 and not the result of some bold change in my psychological writing strategy. I did, however, jot down most of my writing stats in a notebook which means I still have some data to reflect on.

Broadly speaking (and I can’t easily compare 2022’s stats to previous years) my writing output was probably a bit less than it could have been. It was a weird year, and building more structure and discipline around my writing is a definite goal for 2023. That said, in addition to finishing the aforementioned novel, I also wrote seven new short stories (one of which was published), finished one that I started in 2021, and started three additional stories. That’s not bad.

The Stories

I had the pleasure of seeing one of my earlier stories, The Doorman, published in the Fourth Corona Book of Horror—which you can acquire at all good booksellers should you be curious. I also wrote a story specifically for the Camp Slasher Lake anthology and was delighted to have it selected for publication. You can buy a copy of Camp Slasher Lake Volume 2, which features Disassembler: The Revenge Of Billy Burns as its opening story, on the Fedowar Press website. While I also had three other stories rejected (two of which were shortlisted) by other publications, I’m still happy that my stories are slowly getting out there.

I self-published two new stories on my fiction blog, Slightly Odd Tales. The first is a Halloween-themed tale called Mr Farroway’s Cakes, which I challenged myself to write quite late in October. The second is a Christmas story, The Feast of Christmas, which is the 2021 story that I finished up late this year. I also published a handful of older stories to the blog over the course of the year.

Of the remaining stories that I worked on last year, two were random ideas that simply demanded to be written: one was inspired after watching Terminator: Dark Fate (a perfectly decent sequel which, coincidentally, ‘stole’ an idea I had years ago and never got around to writing concerning the domestic life of a Terminator after it completes its mission). The second story was a technology-related idea I’ve had bouncing around for several years and which, it seems, finally gestated this year—an expression which makes the writing process sound really quite strange and Cronenbergian, so don’t expect me to use that again.

I finished two other stories (and started two more) which were loosely based around a common theme. I’ve long wanted to write a themed short story collection, my original idea being to write a novel where each chapter also works as a standalone short story. That idea hasn’t … germinated, yet. However, something did come up which I’ll probably elaborate separately on in a separate blog post later in the year. For now, as they say, watch this space.

The Writing

In terms of the writing itself—as in, sitting down and actually writing words—I noticed two clear trends in my behaviour this year. The first is that when I do have a clear idea of a story, or a clearly defined project to work on (such as editing my novel) I can be satisfyingly productive. While my average writing session (a 30-35 minute session every morning) yielded around 500 words, there were some days where I drew comfortably close to 1,000 words. Ideally I’d like to get back to my previous average of around 700 words per session, but I still work on the basis that writing any words is better than writing no words.

The second thing I noticed (and which mostly explains the first) was a tendency to get distracted. I will frequently have to stop while writing and let my mind wander ahead through the plot so I know what to write next. In those spaces I found that I kept picking up my phone and getting distracted. The other day I deliberately left my phone out of reach (which will be part of the strategy going forward) and instead picked up a book that was sitting on my desk. While the resolution to this will largely come from self-discipline, I have ordered Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus, so I can hopefully better understand why this is happening.

A further element of this comes from my tendency not to overplot my stories—I always come to the blank page with an overall idea of the shape of the story (the main plot, the major events, the pace and tempo, sometimes even a beginning and an end) but it can take me a while to find the story. Some of them come out almost fully-formed, others I go back and forth on until I’ve found the right characters and tone of voice (and a few never quite get there). This can be fun, but it also means a lot more opportunities for me to sit there, stare into space, and get distracted. So, for next year I’m going to look at introducing a little more planning to my work. If all I do is get to the point where I can get up each morning and know exactly what I need to write, then that will count as job done.

Obviously I don’t have the whole year mapped out yet, but I know that my first goal will be structuring this short story project. I’m sure I will get distracted along the way with other tales that demand to be written, but let’s see how this goes for starters.

The Future

I will continue tracking my word counts this year, but in a change to the process I’m going to update my spreadsheet each morning when I finish my writing session. Previously I have scribbled my updates into a convenient notepad and have then, at some laborious point later in the year, transcribed them into my spreadsheet. This just makes the job harder than it needs to be and means I’ve sometimes forgotten what I was working on (especially if my notes aren’t up to scratch). It’s also useful for me to make additional notes if there’s a reason why I haven’t written on a particular day, or have written less than expected.

I’m also thinking of doing monthly writing updates (like this one) for no reason other than it’s a useful way for me to reflect on my progress (and process) and look at what might need changing.

I’m on the fence about whether I should submit more stories. For the most part I just write what I want to write, and not with any particular publication goal in mind. In 2022 I wrote two stories specifically for submission opportunities: one got published and one did not (though I’m very happy with the resulting story).

However, if I’m not going to submit stories regularly then I really need to put more effort into the self-publishing side of things (mostly promotion) which is a lot of work … especially for an introvert like me.

So we’ll see …

Kingterval: Into Thin Air

(12-19 September 2022)

Despite having ‘owned’ Into Thin Air on Kindle for several years, and despite the heavy acclaim surrounding it, it’s taken me until this year to get around to reading Jon Krakauer’s account of his fateful Everest expedition. What ultimately prompted this was a recent episode of Tim Harford’s very excellent Cautionary Tales podcast—not an episode about Everest, but rather a short series of episodes covering Scott’s infamously doomed expedition to the Antarctic. I came away from that fascinated by the extremes some people put themselves through and keen to read more. While I was unable to find a book about Scott and the Antarctic that sufficiently appealed to me I did eventually stumble across that copy of Into Thin Air waiting patiently in my library and thought ‘ah!’

Now, mountaineering and/or climbing is not something that’s ever appealed to me. Not even a teeny bit. I’m not a particularly physical person and I also have what may be either mild vertigo or a realistic fear of falling to my death from a great height. So, yes, climbing is generally off my hobby list. I can sort of understand how some people get satisfaction from pushing their limits and conquering the unconquerable, but the thing that genuinely surprised me while reading Into Thin Air is how absolutely fucking miserable it all sounds.

That said, the author does make it reasonably clear that climbing Everest is unlike most other climbing expeditions he’s embarked upon. There’s a long journey simply to get to the base of Everest (not base camp: just the bottom of the mountain). There are huge costs involved, starting with the visa you need to buy before you will be allowed climb the mountain. Then there’s the acclimatisation, which takes place over several weeks and, judging by its depiction in this book, is among the more gruelling and debilitating processes one can voluntarily put one’s body through. Finally, there’s the climb itself, which judging by this account seems like a constant gamble against time. Can you make it to the top before the weather turns on you? Can you make it back down again before your body grows too frozen and exhausted to move?

The origin of this book comes from a journalist (and experienced climber) being commissioned to climb Everest for a magazine article. The reason it ended up being a book at all is because of the events that took place on the mountain during that particularly brutal expedition. There is some element of retrospect, but this book mostly puts us in the midst of an unfolding tragedy and introduces us to many of the people that it will claim. The author outlines a lot of contributing factors (and doesn’t avoid pointing the finger at himself at times) but at the end of the day this is another strangely compelling story about humans challenging nature and losing.

Adaptations

While not an adaptation of this book, the 2015 movie Everest depicts the same events. I could probably do with watching it again as I recall it being a perfectly competent movie but maybe I’ll get more from it a second time around, having now read an alternative account.

Oddly enough, though, reading this book makes me want to rewatch a completely different and, admittedly, pretty terrible movie about mountaineering: Vertical Limit. It’s dumb and it’s good fun. I hate it and I love it.

One movie I did end up checking out in the wake of reading Into Thin Air was the documentary Free Solo, which follows Alex Honnold’s bid to climb the 3,000 feet vertical rock face of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park, without the benefit of ropes or safety equipment of any kind.

As one of the reviewers on IMDB accurately states: “by far one of the best horror films I have ever seen.”

The Reading

Considering this was an impulse read, it was an agreeably swift and engaging one. Jon Krakuaer delivers some fine writing to help convey the experience and the narrative comes with the grim compulsion to keep turning the page and find out what terrible thing is going to happen next. If it’s your sort of thing, then it’s an easy recommendation.

Kingterval: Doctor Who novelisations

(July 2 – 12)

If you were a Doctor Who fan in the 1970s or 1980s there’s a near 100% chance you’ll be familiar with the Target novelisations that were, back in the dark ages, the only way for fans to revisit older Doctor Who adventures. As a major Who fan I used to collect and read these pocket sized books endlessly, and some of them remain imprinted on my memory even now. When one of the series’ most prolific authors, Terrance Dicks, died a while back it’s not for nothing that many people talked about the impact he had on children’s literacy back in the day.

Cut ahead to 2016: the newly revived TV series has been going strong for more than a decade already and BBC Books make the awesome decision to revive the old Target brand and reissue a select handful of seven of these original novels complete, in an essential step with the original artwork. Several more reissues followed over ensuing years and we eventually started to see novelisations of some new series stories, which was tremendously exciting.

I have a modest collection of about 80 of the original novels, so naturally I’ve been adding these new releases to my collection as they emerge. However, it wasn’t until recently that I thought maybe, perhaps, I could consider  reading some of these books that I keep buying. Radical idea, I know, but bear with me. To be honest it was more out of idle curiosity than a genuine commitment that I picked Dalek, by Robert Shearman, off the shelf. This one drew me on account of Robert Shearman being a writer that one of my good friends rates highly so it seemed a good place to start. 

Obviously I’d already seen the episode that the novelisation is based on, so I was pretty impressed to find that the first chapter bore absolutely no relation whatsoever to anything I had seen on screen and, adding further intrigue, it wasn’t immediately clear how it would eventually tie into the story. I needed to read more!

In keeping with the original Target novels, Dalek was an enjoyably swift read. However, unlike those old novelisations which often skewed very close to the televised story (sometimes to a fault) Shearman makes a few changes here and there and, perhaps most impressively, gives a detailed backstory to almost every speaking character in the story.

I enjoyed Dalek so much I decided to pick another one to read right away and went with Stephen Moffatt’s novelisation of his own 50th anniversary story Day Of The Doctor. This was a chunkier book than Dalek, but it’s one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had in years. Moffatt does some incredibly clever and funny things with his story and gives it a whole new lease of life in written form. I could write about this one for reams, but rather than do that I will urge you to read it if you have even the vaguest interest in Doctor Who. It’s like reading a Douglas Adams novel, but one with an actual plot.

For my final reading choice (because things always have to come in threes) I went with Russell T Davies’ novelisation of his triumphant first episode for New Who, Rose. Of all the books this one is closest to the original Target style, but still adds depth and backstory that you would rarely find in those old novelisations. Released 15 years after the episode first aired (15 years!! What even is time???) one of the most entertaining features about this book is how Russell T Davies manages to include all sorts of callbacks (call forwards?) to events and characters that would appear much, much later in the series. It’s a lovely way of tying this (re)introductory story into the glorious future that Davies would shepherd the revived series towards.

Adaptations …?

So this section is a bit backwards this time given that the books themselves are adaptations of the original TV episodes. However, in keeping with the house style I still feel obliged to include brief mentions of the televisual counterparts here.

Clearly Dalek was one of the more exciting debut episodes of the new series (new Doctor, new series, and the Daleks were back!). It’s a solid episode. I remember at the time thinking how strange it was hearing a Dalek that was more than a monosyllabic monster but, of course, it didn’t take long for them to fall back into their old ways.

Even more hyped was Day Of The Doctor. At the time I was a little underwhelmed; perhaps I was expecting more fan service. Over subsequent rewatches I’ve come away thinking it’s easily among the best episodes that New Who has delivered.

Finally, Rose. Could there possibly have ever been a more anticipated episode of Doctor Who. Rose, in my view, absolutely nailed it. It’s a vision of Doctor Who that never could have happened in the original run, but was absolutely what the show needed to bring it up to date and make it work for both new and old audiences. I have my gripes with some of Davies’ later episodes, but I will forever bring him credit for bringing Who back and making it work.

The Reading

Not a whole lot to add here. I read Dalek over two nights. Day Of The Doctor took a bit longer (perhaps four nights) but was one of those books I only reluctantly put down when sleep beckoned. Rose, I think, was a three-nighter.

And all were thoroughly enjoyable!

Revisiting King: Needful Things

7 March – 8 May

I fittingly reach the end of my current stage of Stephen King rereads with a novel that marked the end of a certain phase of Stephen King’s career—or, specifically, the end of a certain home for his tales. Needful Things, first published in 1991, was heavily marketed as being the final Castle Rock novel: the tale in which he would destroy, once and for all, the small American town in which many of his novels and stories had been set. Cinephiles may also recognise it as the name of Rob Reiner’s production company (Reiner having directed Stand By Me, which is chronologically the earliest Castle Rock tale if I’m not mistaken).

For me, the most interesting thing about Needful Things is the position it takes in Stephen King’s life and career. As such, both the start and end points for the second stage of my Revisiting King reread project were carefully selected and encompass the following five novels.

Right here we have what would have almost certainly been the most tumultuous phase of Stephen King’s life had a certain van driver not been paying more attention to the road a few years later. It’s no secret anymore that King was an alcoholic, and also had the money for a decent cocaine habit. Given this framing, it’s fitting that one of his earliest Castle Rock novels, Cujo, is the one that he famously has no memory of writing. However, we’re jumping ahead of ourselves a little here. Or maybe backwards.

You see, Stephen King never set out to be a horror writer: he just happened to end up writing horror stories that sold really, really well. He broke the mould to an extent with his Dark Tower series, but his first mainstream attempt to dabble in another genre, The Eyes Of The Dragon, was (reportedly) not well accepted by fans. King promptly followed this up with Misery, a story about a writer who endures horrific abuse after trying to end a popular series of novels so he can concentrate on the less popular works that he actually wants to write. Along the way he becomes addicted to painkillers. It doesn’t exactly sound unfamiliar.

His next novel, The Tommyknockers—a tale of insidious alien invasion—seems something of an outlier … until you read it and realise that it’s all about the people of Haven becoming hooked on a form of alien influence and losing their sense of responsibility as they become more and more powerful, and wreak more and more damage on those around them. As an analogy for being drunk it’s pretty on the nose.

It was in the wake of this novel that King’s wife, Tabitha, intervened and King finally sought help for his addictions. I’ve read conflicting reports on whether The Dark Half or Needful Things is the first book he wrote while sober, but both bring a deep sense of purging with their narratives. The Dark Half (as you’ll almost certainly be aware) echoes Misery in its story of a writer trying to rid himself of a far more successful pen-name / alter-ego. Like Paul Sheldon, Thad Beaumont finds that some facets of his life are not so easily buried. Literally. Symbolically, this reflected some of King’s experiences surrounding the decision to finish off his own pseudonym, Richard Bachman—yet another aspect of King’s life and career that had recently been excised.

So finally we come to Needful Things (which acts as a slight continuation of The Dark Half in that it features one of the main characters from that novel and refers back to its events on occasion). In Needful Things, the citizens of Castle Rock are beset upon by Leland Gaunt, a devilish figure who offers each person who visits his shop the thing they desire most in the world … all in return for a simple favour. It is the nature of these favours that eventually tears the town apart, but only because of the obsessive, hypnotic—and, one would say, addictive—effect these objects of desire have on their owners.

For me Needful Things represents King tearing down one of his final crutches: a familiar, cosy setting for his stories—a place that needs little establishment or introduction. A home. We’ve already seen him attempt to move away from the financially secure trapping of the horror genre. We’ve seen him put a less successful pseudonym to rest. Off-screen, as it were, we’ve also seen him overcome his addictions. 

While I have no experience in this area, I gather it’s a thing that those recovering from addiction will often excise parts of their life from before their recovery—I guess it’s the mental equivalent of starting from a clean slate. King kept his marriage, but apparently fired his agent as part of this purging process. The destruction of a small fictional American town might be small-fry in comparison to the real-life events going on, but it surely marks a final step in Stephen King’s transformation towards the next phase of his career.

The Adaptation

There is one movie adaptation of Needful Things that was released in 1993. Like many King adaptations of this era it comes with the non-essential feel of a TV movie, as if the latest King adaptation was just something that had to be done and gotten out of the way. That’s really just my way of saying that I’ve never felt any urge to watch it.

That being said, the casting has some elements of perfection. Max Von Sydow as the sinister shop owner Leland Gaunt probably couldn’t be topped, while I can absolutely see Ed Harris as Sheriff Pangborn. Without going too far into spoiler or plot territory, Amanda Plummer and J.T.Walsh are both well, if a little predictably, cast according to their screen personas. The other notable cast member is Bonnie Bedelia, who I can well imagine delivering the strength and independence, but also the vulnerability, that her character would require.

But I’m still not gonna watch it.

The Reading

I have to admit I found this a pretty tedious read. I’m fairly convinced there was potential for a great novel here—the setup of Gaunt coming to town, giving the citizens what they most desire, and then using his hold over them to pit them against one another and destroy the town could provide the basis for a remarkable novel. Unfortunately, King’s structure, which mostly devolves into scene after scene of this person plotting in increasingly paranoid fashion against that person quickly becomes repetitive. As a quick read this could still work, but this is one of the those novels where King gets a bit carried away and consequently the build up to the climax proves excruciatingly slow.

Up Next: I’ll be taking a break from King for a while (most likely to read Jeff Vandermeer’s Area X trilogy) but I’ll be back eventually with Gerald’s Game which, at the very least, comes with an excellent film adaptation.

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